Dark Matter
by MissVictoriaRose
Summary: Once upon a time, the hero slayed the Basilisk and everything really went downhill from there for Harry Potter. DZ2's 'I will not die' challenge.
1. Slaying Monsters

_"Haven't I told you, killing mudbloods doesn't matter to me any more. For many months now, my new target has been you."_

The Basilisk hisses and lunges forward, jaws open, teeth dripping with saliva.

 _"Dumbledore has been driven out of his castle by the mer memory of me."_

Muscles burning from over use, swinging and swinging Godric's heavy sword to no avail. Never once piercing the monster's scales. I won't give up. I can't give up. If I do, then he wins. Monsters like him don't get to win.

It strikes, teeth shining,I bat it away with the sword. The rubble from the stone statue shifts under my feet. I stumble back from the ledge of the statue as part of it breaks off and drops into the water below. The beast readies to strike again.  
I left the sword, ignoring the tremblingin my arms. If this is it, if this is how I am todie, then I will die fighting- just like my parents.

It lunges at me, sharp fangs bared,andI swing the sword once more.

 _"Voldemort is my past, my present, and my future."_

Like a hot knife through butter, the sword meets the roof of the Basilisk's mouth, and keeps going. The end of it coated in black liquid, glistening from the light from the torches lining the walls of the chamber, as itsticks out the top of the  
snake's skull.

I yank the sword out of it's mouth. The beast falls in to the water below, soaking the walls with tainted water.

The room spins a little, as I crawl off the statue.

The pain in my arm makes itself known as I drag myself back to Ginny, back to Tom.

A clanking sound echoes about the room as I drop the sword. 

"Amazing isn't it? How quickly the Basilisk's venom seeps into the bloodstream of it's victims," Tom Riddle taunted.

The room spins again, taking a bit longer to right itself.

There was a tooth protruding from my black veins grew from the wound.

I pulled the tooth out.

"…a girl and her diary."

The diary.

The diary Tom came from. The diary that Ginny wrote in.

The diary. The diary. The diary.

"What are you doing?" Tom asked, fear dripping from his voice.

The diary. Pages blank, deceivingly innocent. The damned cursed diary.

I raised my arm, tooth in hand.

"Stop that!"

The room spins, black dots start to fill my vision.

"NO!"

Black liquid sprayed.

 _The darkness took over._

* * *

 **AN:** An idea I had in response to DZ2's 'I will not die' challenge. Should I keep going?


	2. It's All in your Head

There was light.

White blinding light. For all I could see was white light.

My limbs tingled. My muscles ached. The only sound was of my breath, labored in and out. In and out.

Slowly, it all came into focus. Kings Crossing Station, still dosed in shades of white. There is a strangeness of it all. Like the feeling of waking up harshly and reality has quite snapped into place yet.

A ways away to my left is a white bench. Underneath is a shadow. The only shadow here. The only darkness.

I stepped closer.

A new sound filled the air.

I can hear someone's breathing, gasping as if in pain.

I stepped closer, crouching down.

Underneath the bench, laid a body.

A body disfigured, only bone and bloodied flesh.

It breathed, as if pained to do so.

"You can't help it," a voice said.

I jump, spinning around to face it.

"Harry," Dumbledore said. "You wonderful boy. Walk with me."

So we walked, going farther down the platform.

A new sound followed on our heels, hissing like of a snake's.

I swear I even heard my name.

"Professor, what was that thing?" I asked.

"A piece of Voldemort's soul, killed off by what has happened to you."

"Does that mean," I licked my lips hesitantly, "Does that mean that thing was inside me?"

"Yes," Dumbledore said. There was a look in his eye, that I couldn't comprehend, "such darkness can't ever truly be cleansed."

More hissing caught my attention. The noises seemed to come from the very walls.

"Exactly, where are we?" I asked.

"You know where we are Harry," Dumbledore said gently.

"Am… am I dead?" I asked.

"You will find that 'dead' carries such notes of finality that would be unthinkable in this situation."

"So, I'm not dead?"

"You, my boy, are something entirely new."

"But, where are we? How do I get back—if I'm not dead? What happened?"

"Harry," Dumbledore pleads, "do not fear the darkness."

"But—" my words trail off, as I noticed dark ink-like gunk spilling out from the walls.

"It's in you, Harry. It's in your veins." Dumbledore said, the ink started to flood from the floor. There is a scream from behind us, accompanied with the most horrible searingsound, like grease being dumped on into boiling hot water.

"You can not run from this, nor can you hide." The previously blinding white slowly became darker,poison eating away at the light as if itcouldn't be stopped. "We can not change our past actions," Dumbledore continued as he pulled me up to  
stand on a bench with him, "yet we can alway control our futures. It is up to us, and us alone, to be the good the world needs."

This felt too much like a 'farewell', but we were stuck—trapped. The black pool of gunk was slowly rising to level the seat of the bench. There was no where to run. We were trapped.

"If you wish to be good, my boy," he said, putting his hands on my shoulders, "you mustsimply decide to be good."

Then he pushed.

I reached out, attempting to grab him or the back of the bench—anything.

Yet, he slipped through my fingers.

And I fell.

The liquid burned.

Like a bath, just a few degrees too hot, of when your drink hot coco too fast. It burns my skin,my lungs, and everything in between.

The darkness swallowed me whole.


	3. Rose Colored Glasses (GW POV)

Ginny Weasley was a nice girl.

At least, that's what she told herself. She couldn't control it. It wasn't her fault. She would whisper those words over and over, like a prayer, as she opened the diary and put ink to page. It was an addiction. She was a victim.

It wasn't her fault.

Even if she new better.

Find the brain, her father had once told her about magical things that appeared sentient. She had looked, throughly searched, the first time the diary had written back to her.

She couldn't find it.

She should have told an adult, or at the very least—put it down, and leave it.

But, it was a diary, that wrote back to her.

It was new. The pages were clean and crips. The leather cover was still soft. She was the first, that she knew of, to use it. It was the only thing she owned that was a hand-me-down.

She refused to give it up.

So, she wrote in it, and the diary had written back.

It's name was Tom, a sweet boy with a sharp wit—whose sole attention was on her.

She liked the attention.

So, she wrote more.

Every rant, every dream, every passing thought and opinion eventually made it's way into the diary.

It wasn't her fault, but she knew something was wrong.

There were time lapses.

Mornings where she would wake up in her bed with no memory of how she got there. Rumors about slaughtered chickens that she didn't give a second thought to, until she found a white bird feather in her shoe. Bad things would happen—words written in blood  
on the walls, someone opening ancient secret chambers—and she couldn't recall what she had been doing at the time.

It wasn't her fault. She was a victim.

She had tried to get rid of the cursed diary.

She had flushed it down the toilet in the shunned girls bathroom, confident she'd never see it again. But she did, with Harry Potter—of all people.

He had her diary.

Tom would have told Harry everything—just like he told her everything.

That wasn't allowed to happen, so she stole it back.

But it wasn't her fault.

She was the victim. Tom Riddle possessed her.

It was him, who made her write her own death note on the wall.

 _Her body will lie in the chamber forever._

Tom made her bait.

Tom made her bait for Harry Potter.

And Harry Potter had come to rescue her, just like Tom wanted.

Harry fought a basilisk for her, vanquished it with the Sword of Gryffindor.

He stood up to Tom Riddle, to slay a beast and a diary.

All for her.

Because she needed saving. Because she was a victim.

Because it wasn't her fault. It wasn't her fault. It wasn't her fault.

It couldn't have been her fault, not where her hero, the hero of the wizarding world, was laying there dead.

Because his final act was saving her—she couldn't, wouldn't think of it being her own stupidity, her own self, he had saved her from.

Because it wasn't her fault.

Professors found them,minutes later, maybe hours.

The crazy cat janitor had tried to clean up the flooded bathroom, when he noticed the large opened wall between the sinks.

He had fetched a professor, professor Flitwick, who fetched professor McGonagall, who fetched the Headmaster, who lead them all, minus the janitor, down to the chamber, where they had found Ron and a mentally-impaired professor Lockhart.

The professors then made quick work of the collapsed entryway.

At least, that's what they told Ginny, who couldn't have cared less, because Harry was still dead.

That news had rattled all of the teacher, but not as much as the news that Tom Riddle, who had called himself Voldemort, had possessed her—via the diary—to unleash the chamber's monster on the school.

They teared up at the news that Harry's last action had been to defeat the diary dark lord.

'Noble, just like his father' they had said.

Ginny didn't care, what did 'noble' matter, when Harry was dead?

They moved his body to the infirmary. Healers were brought in, test were ran, then ran again.

People, of all ages, or all houses, stopped by at all hours of the day, to stand there, over Harry's dead body and cry.

Ginny thought it was ridiculous. They all hated him a few weeksago. Those that had spilt the biggest tears hadbeen the ones most vocal in the condemnation of Harry Potter.

Hypocrites.

They gave him a new title, gone was 'The-boy-who-lived', instead Harry Potter became 'The-boy-who-saved', since he had given his life to defeat the last lingering bit of the Dark Lord.

The press ate it up like hungry wolves.

Minister Fudge even made a personal appearance to the Hogwarts' infirmary. He stood there, at his portable podium, next to the Headmaster and the head of the DMLE, spouting out empty promises and reassurances that the dark lord was, in fact, completely  
dead.

Harry Potter had died ensuringthat.

The minister stood there, full of fake smile and fake word, while cameras flashed.

Meanwhile, in the third bed on the right, position strategically for the press conference, laid 'the-boy-who-saved'. Declared dead to the world.

Well, until he took a breath and sat up.


End file.
